The present disclosure generally relates to conditional messages or other communications, and more specifically to handling messages with various types of conditions.
Typically, when one sends a message (e.g., a text message) to another person's phone, the message is immediately displayed after the other person's phone receives the message. However, there are times that it is desirable for a message to not be displayed immediately. For example, the sender of the message may not want the message to be displayed until the other person is at a geographical location, such as a grocery store. U.S. Patent Publication 2008/0268895 and U.S. Pat. No. 8,068,856 describe using geographic location. Such conditions are easy to implement using a geo-fence as the single and only possible condition.
While such methods do provide a convenient way of specifying when a message will be displayed, such methods are focused on geographic location. Thus, a sender is limited in how he/she can specify a condition for when a message is to be displayed. Besides only focusing on geographic location, current methods do not provide a framework for enabling multiple types of conditions, even if such other conditions may have been known.
It is therefore desirable to provide systems, methods, and apparatuses for handling a variety of different types of conditions, which may use a variety of different properties associated with the receiving device to determine when a communication is provided.